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Saturday, 13 June 2015

How well or badly were slaves treated in the American South?

I have stumbled on a reference to the Slave Narratives, the cumulative result of two years of in depth interviews surveying over 2,000 former slaves by the Works Project Administration under Franklin D Roosevelt. The historian Robert Fogelsaid that between 60 to 80 percent of the interviewees had only positive things to say about their masters and their life during slave days. I'd like to know much more about the subject.

I remember my surprise, studying US history in my first term at university in 1980 (sooo recently), expecting historians to write about slavery in something like the spirit of 'Gone With The Wind', and finding that, though 1930s US historians did so, (I read and learnt much from Ulrich Phillips)1970s historians compared slavery to Auschwitz and blamed slavery for black criminality and broken families more than a century later. Historians always write about their own age when they try to understand the past.There were strong zeitgeist reasons for emphasising the ugliness of slavery in the 1970s, as nowadays, and strong zeitgeist reasons in the 1930s for doing the opposite. Those who espouse the spirit of the age are eventually widowed, but for Americans (and not only them) the time when they can be dispassionate about race is a long way off. I am reading War and Peace at the moment and seeing that Russian serfs were apt to be beaten and punished (although not sold) as much as American slaves. Over a third of Russians were serfs until Tsar Alexander II liberated them in 1861. Yet we hear little of the Russian serfs or other European serfs. We hear little of the serfs and gypsy slaves in what is now Romania or of the vast numbers of slaves in the Muslim world. Slavery in America and the European colonies are at the forefront of our attention because of the colour issue, which so concerns everyone in our age.I wrote in this post about how the former Governor-General of Jamaica, Sir Howard Cooke, who died last year, a black man, was thankful that slavery rescued Jamaicans from

Africa's black night

and gave them the benefits of British civilisation. My post links to a very interesting interview with Sir Howard Cooke, who was a truer British patriot than many or most British people, including the BNP and the fascists.Here are some quotations from the WPA interviews with (very elderly) former slaves:

“I liked being a slave, our white folks . . . were good to us. . . . I had rather be a slave. . . . . I wish I wuz still in slavery.”

“When I was three or four years old my mother was whipped to death by the mistress with a cowhide whip.”

“My white folks was good to me. I had a heep better time when I growed up than folks does now. . . . Shucks I was a heep better off.”

“Our white folks wuz rich folks. Dey live in a big white house wid roun’ posts in front. Dey give us plenty to eat and wear but dey beat on us a plenty. . . . Den one day . . . dem Yankee mens tole us de guvment would give us some land and a mule or some hosses to work wid, but we never did git nothing from dem. We wuked hard for whut we got. We wuz mighty proud of our freedom – but times is a lot harder now dan it wuz in dem times. Now we can’t git ’nough to eat and dere’s nobody to look atter us, but de white folks whut takes pity on us, and heps us sometimes. Times is gittin’ harder it seems to me.”

“After the white folks eat in the dining room, all us cullud folks eat in the kitchen, allus a plenty, which is more than we has now. Times was good then, I members back to it sometimes now, when I is glad jes’ to get a piece of bread. . . . Oh the sweet taters we did have! . . . great big winter cabbages. . . . [and] so many sides an’ hams of meat.”

Asking how well or badly slaves were treated touches a raw nerve with modern Americans. Most Europeans were serfs in the middle ages and long after in many countries. But for Americans slavery is a very emotional issue.This is because of the collective American nervous breakdown over race and Americans' collective need to see their country as a shining city on a hill. This Protestant sense of being a chosen people, which derives from 18th century English ideas about England, is tiresome but admirable and a great source of America's moral strength - along with religiosity, patriotism, lack of irony and the American inability to be embarrassed. Slavery and the elimination of the indigenous Americans is a problem for people who believe in America's divine mission to purify the world. (So is the invasion of Mexico and a few other things, come to that.)I am not an apologist for slavery and am proud that Great Britain abolished it in 1833. I think Dr Johnson was the greatest Englishman after Shakespeare and I love him for saying, before the American rebellion,

How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

Quite so. But slavery and things as bad as slavery unfortunately still exist.

What things do we accept for which our descendants will condemn us? Abortion? I hope so.Falling birth-rates in European countries?Child labour?In the last fifty years blacks have largely stopped working in farms in the American South and Hispanic immigrants have taken their places. Children as young as twelve work legally and children as young as seven work illegally on farms, including the tobacco farms of North Carolina and Virginia, where they endanger their health picking tobacco that ends up in the factories of Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, Lorillard, Reynolds and other big producers.Children work in tobacco farms in Malawi picking tobacco for wages of less than $10 a month. The more you look into things you find slavery and things fairly close to slavery are easily to be found, hidden in full sight.

69 comments:

FDR took office seventy years after the Emancipation Proclamation, sixty-five years after the official abolition of slavery by the 13th Amendment. The youngest person with coherent recollections of slavery in 1933 would have been nearly seventy, the youngest one fit for field labor under slavery would have been nearly eighty. The intervening period was not in general a happy one for African Americans. But the salient point about memories of a time sixty-five years past, is that they look back to a period of youth and energy. That is likely to make up for a lot.

The treatment of slaves is marginal or even irrelevant to the point That slavery is , was ,and will always be an moral outrage- it does not matter how well or how poorly they are treated! Slavery in America is not the result of racism but the cause- it is the result of have to reconcile the immorality of the institution with publicly even private moral and ethical code of a Christian civilization.

As a slave you might be lucky if you ended up with a decent owner owning you. But if you didn't life could be very unpleasant and you would have no recourse at all. And of course separating families was a big part of slavery too (conservatives claim to love families, but soft-pedal how slavery broke them up). Not a reliably benevolent system to count on, happy memories notwithstanding.

Although Romanians and Russians don't talk much about slavery, it has clearly had an impact on their political systems and culture, and not a good one.

It would depend on the owner but slaves were extremely expensive to buy ($150 for a field hand, up to $300 for a well spoken trained house servant or good breeding stock) so their was a HUGE investment in manpower that had to be fed, cared for when sick and housed. Like a fine car or other expensive property, good treatment was good business.Many Southerners became very attached to the house slaves and treated them almost like family. After the Emancipation Proclamation, thousands left the plantations but millions stayed even after the war; it was the only home they knew.There were the Simon Legree type who were brutal bastards but they were few as cruelty was not acceptable in "polite" Southern society.

The best book on this subject is "Time on the Cross," By Fogleman and Engerman, published c. 1975. The authors used sabremetric methods in determining such things as caloric intake, etc. One of their posits was that, as slaves were expensive items the reasons to keep them healthy, etc. were important. The book engendered amazing criticism (mostly negative) when it was published with the authors labeled as racists and worse (one of the authors was married to a black lady). As a result, I do not think that this important document has received nearly as much study as it should have had. Cheers, DLR

Since it was illegal to teach slaves to read or write, exactly who was writing these self-serving narratives. There were good and bad owners, much like good and bad bosses. But is slavery was so great then why were so many attempting escape, especially know if they were caught they faced a horrible death. If it was a good life, then why did the south insist on laws enabling them to go into free states after their "property"? This is revisionist history promoted by self-serving individuals who consider African-Americans to lesser people. Next they will be claiming the Klan was just a social group like the VFW. FYI - I am a 60+ year old woman who was born and raised in the deep South.

These were interviews, conducted very late in the day when the slaves interviewed were very old.

I did not want to try to justify slavery or make light of its evils. I wonder though if things were worse for slaves in Alabama than for Africans who remained in Benin and who may very possibly have also been slaves.

"This is revisionist history promoted by self-serving individuals who consider African-Americans to lesser people." I certainly am not such an individual but you are right. It is the relation between whites and blacks which vexes discussions about slavery. This is why discussions of whites made slaves by Barbary pirates do not give rise to strong emotions.

Slavery of any kind is abhorrent, but it is hidden in plain sight and in more than one way. Many equate communism to slavery, and for good reasons. So yes, the slavery economic/social model cannot last and it was meant to fail (as well as communism), but what came after is even worst. There is a large body of literature that details the disastrous results of the affirmative action policies. And we live out the results of those policies, where being black is actually a huge advantage if you ride the right wave (see the white woman who pretends she is black) It just created a widely divided black community: the rich/middle class blacks and the large crowd of black poor. The former made an effort to blend, the later were left way behind. Orchestrating this abysmal policy failures are the political activists. So I would dare to say that a lot of the black or any other skin color poor are still slaves, of the welfare policies. And their owner has no interest in keeping them healthy and productive, on the contrary.

Interesting comparison to communism. I am reminded of people who wished they still lived under Ceausescu. No doubt there were slaves who preferred to stay with their masters rather than to face a harsh new world of uncertainty. Moreover, if maintaining slaves was expensive, then perhaps it was economically beneficial to planters to get the asset (chattel) off their books,so to speak, and to outsource their labor in a compettive market. Leaving aside morality, a purely economic analysis of slavery may produce surprising insights.marc

The comparison with Communism crossed my mind. Communism was much more enslaving than other forms of dictatorship but I suspect people like what Eden called the firm smack of government. As a psychopath said to me 'Victims want to be victims. I really believe that.' And then there is Stockholm syndrome about which psychopaths know much.

Slavery is certainly a very bad thing but I think in American eyes it is worse than in European eyes for three reasons. First because the American ideology is freedom and individualism and the USA, not being based on ethnicity, is centred on its ideology. Then because Americans see themselves as a shining city on a hill. And then because of race.

Actually I do not think people spend energy in Russia getting upset about serfdom. This is partly because much worse things happened after serfdom was abolished in 1861 but more because the serf-owners were the same race or nation as the serfs. This makes a very big difference. This is also why the former Soviet satellites are very anti-Communist while older Russians look back on Communism with nostalgia. (I know Stalin was Georgian and Khrushchev Ukrainian but that doesn’t matter.)

"Now hear me on this. When Australia was just a convict settlement, Jamaica was an established outpost of British commerce and British civilisation."Civilisation? "Yes," he replied. "Even during slavery the British were sending some very good people out to Jamaica . . . missionaries, reformers . . . but, as I said, to Australia, just convicts." "But Jamaica was a brutal place . . . the plantation," I said. Cooke was not going to condone slavery, was he? "Well, neither am I going to harp on about the wickedness of slavery. Jamaica's greatness was due entirely to slavery." Yes, the iniquities; yes, the horrors; but slavery, for all its manifest brutality, had rescued Cooke and his forebears from "night-black" Africa and shown them "true" (that is, British) civilisation.

Enslaving people is never a good idea from a practical point of view, let alone a moral one. You end up with an unhappy population with limited skills who cannot fully participate in your society and resent it terribly. Any culture that has enslaved others (or members of its own culture) has always reaped bad blowback for generations.

You could never write this in America where the history is so tainted, the conversation so dishonest about race and slavery. Only a non Yank could write a balanced piece such as this.

My children being educated in America are fed the party line about everything including Columbus, slavery etc. My 13 year old was surprised when I told him that it was common practice among tribes in Africa to take slaves, some of which they sold to the European traders on the coasts. You mean blacks enslaved blacks? This is taboo to discuss in New York anyway.

It's fashionable to blame whites for all the ills in the black community when a serious and honest introspection is required. Sadly America's first black president has steered far way from this radioactive issue.

One account of Nat Turner's rebellion (attributed to James Wells Brown) describes how one slaveowner Captain Harris was protected from the approaching slaves by his half-brother, a slave named Jim Harris (typically, the son of a common father.)

In the aftermath of the rebellion, the rage and vengeance of the slaveowners was unrestrained, and a great many Black people were killed and torture. In that frenzy, Jim Harris reportedly suggested moderation to his white brother (and owner) Captain Harris. And Harris pulled his weapon and killed Jim right there.

On one level, master and slave were often (literally) of the same family. Their "treatment" included food, clothing and housing (in exchange for unpaid labor) -- and there was a range in what precisely that "treatment" was.

But the fact was that these were millions of enslaved people -- and no matter how they were fed or housed, their masters had unrestricted power over them.

When Captain Harris was enraged by the attitude of his own brother -- he was within his rights to pull his gun and shoot the man dead. (In a number of states, there are long decades in which no white man is ever tried, convicted or punished for the murder of a black man -- and this is true after slavery as well as before.)

There are records of the genuine shock and dismay of slaveowners when they suddenly realized what their slaves *really* thought of them. They lived in a bubble, where their brutality and absolute control forced slaves to present a "smiling face" in a hateful intimacy. And the moment "those damn Yankees" showed up, some slaveowners knew that rebellion and desertion were inevitable, and others were truly amazed (and even felt betrayed) when they realized how deeply their slaves hated them, and how desperately they longed to be free.

There was also a moment (close to defeat) where the Confederacy's pool of soldiers was depleted, a few voice advocated the arming of the slaves "to fight for our way of life." But those naive enough to believe that slaves loved that "way of life" were few, and there were never any serious attempts to field african soldiers in this war against African emancipation. (One small "unit" of Black men was marched around Richmond on parade, at one point, but apparently no one actually gave them any weapons.)

In one side of their mouth, the slavocracy claimed their slaves were better 'treated" than northern factory workers. But out of the other side, they acknowledged that they could give guns to "their" slaves, the ways the Northern government armed those same factory workers.

A group of upstanding, religious, high-achieving black people were just murdered by a young white racist nutcase man with a firearm. Keep the faith in happy slaves though, and keep perpetuating the falsehood that racism no longer exists.

" My 13 year old was surprised when I told him that it was common practice among tribes in Africa to take slaves, some of which they sold to the European traders on the coasts. You mean blacks enslaved blacks? This is taboo to discuss in New York anyway."

I live in New York and it is not taboo to discuss this. Blacks enslaved other blacks, but whites did the same with ledgers, shipping lines, accounting and "superior" HR methods. Two wrongs do not make a right.

"According to the most recent (2011) FBI statistics, of the 2,695 murders in which the victim was black, 91% were committed by people of the same race. Whites and white-Hispanics were the perpetrator in only 193 (7%) cases."

Everyone knows about black on black crime. Conservatives love to rub it in black peoples' face. That community has a lot of internalized problems to be sure.

That does not rule out the fact that a racist freak just blew away a bunch of pretty with-it, upstanding black people. A sensational case, yes, and something to get upset about.

You like this phrase you have coined -- and repeated -- about "America's nervous breakdown" over race. I'd call it more of a case of chronic depression. Something we sadly live with and seem to be able to do less and less about.

There is no doubt that slavery holds heavy future burdens for any society that practices it, coy references to Periclean Athens aside.

The slave owners who emigrated from Haiti, forming the Creole class in New Orleans, were generally horrible to their slaves (that's why they lost Haiti). The expected lifespan of a slave in a Haitian plantation was about one year. The cruelty of the Louisiana slave owner was legendary among slaves in other regions. "To be sold down the river", which now expresses betrayal, originally meant being sold as a slave in New Orleans (down the Mississippi). Ironically, a large number of these slave owners were themselves black under the Code Civil. One's skin color did not bar one from high social status in French colonies, as it did in English colonies. A good example of this was the Empress Josephine, who was probably 1/8th or 1/16 black (despite the later protestations of her family members). In or around 1992, the City Council of New Orleans decided to rename any school named after a slave owner, naming them instead after antebellum prosperous and free blacks. Unfortunately, they then found out that most of the new namesakes were named after slave-owning blacks. I can't remember the ending of that kerfuffle.

My PhD thesis was on the constitutional history of slavery during the French Revolution. As George states, the conditions of slaves in the French colonies were terrible. The principle reason for this (as explained in Time on the Cross noted above) was the the tropical climate was so terrible, the labor needed to plant and harvest sugar cane so brutal, and the chance of death from tropical disease so high that it simply was not cost effective for the planters to take care of their slaves. The British did much better, as did most American slave owners. Cheers, DLR

I think the author may be missing a very valid point. I take it these testimonies date to the 1930s when there was an economic crisis, unemployment and hunger with the added problem of the dustbowl. People are remembering what things were like sixty years earlier when they were fit and healthy, they did not have to get up twelve times a night to use the toilet and their bones did not hurt, even if they were slaves. Everyone says that things used to be better because when one has the ailments of old age, they possibly were.

I do note however that both the Old and New Testament assume slavery is normal and Jesus did not condemn it unlike divorce. It may be that in Old Testament times slavery had its positive aspects. It was in the middle ages and in 19th century Russia part of the feudal system. Slavery in the New World was different although apparently more benign in South America than in North America, so historians have said.

I think the author may be missing a very valid point. I take it these testimonies date to the 1930s when there was an economic crisis, unemployment and hunger with the added problem of the dustbowl. People are remembering what things were like sixty years earlier when they were fit and healthy, they did not have to get up twelve times a night to use the toilet and their bones did not hurt, even if they were slaves. Everyone says that things used to be better because when one has the ailments of old age, they possibly were.

I've listened to the slave narratives. There was one slave in particular whose story struck me. She told a devastating story of a drowning and it involved the some neglect of the slave owner. She told her story to a white interviewer and told the story matter of factly, almost with an innocuous tone. A black interviewer visited her by mistake, not realizing she'd already been interviewed. She told her story again, but this time she much more animated and angry about the drowning and the slaves treatment. While I appreciate the narratives and the everything the former slaves went through, they may not have always been truthful. I believe they were conditioned and feared showing their true feelings to white people. So, if anybody thinks for one moment that enslaved people were happy to be there and were "treated well" think again. A person owned by another could never be treated well enough to pay for those conditions. For years black people have been "nice" to white peoples face, but scorch them behind their back. We're not as forgiving, or thankful for being treated well as you might think.

Naturally, over the whole of the American slave experience, there were individual instances of kind masters and mistresses and fair overseers; also there was a distinctly better level of treatment of slaves who comprised household staff, as opposed to field workers. Some owners, motivated by the Christianity, provided educational as well as spiritual facilties for their slaves. However, we shouldn't let the relatively small number of instances of good or affectionate treatment of slaves to obscure the fact that, for the majority of people unfortunate enough to be enslaved, that it was an exhausting, degrading and utterly demoralising experience. The 'industrial' nature of US slavery, added to its racial element, probably made it the most cruel example of the practice in modern times. No one should make excuses for the institution, or fail to recognise the first modern republic was one of the last advanced states to abolish the practice and that only after a bloody civil war.

I suspect the majority of masters were humane, as the Slave Narratives and the evidence of foreign travellers to the American South suggest. Some were horribly inhumane.

The worst aspect of slavery was I imagine the terrible trans-Atlantic crossing in which up to a third of the poor slaves died.

As I said in my blog post it is not slavery that gets people heated but the colour issue. People could write about the wickedness of serfdom which persisted in the Austrian Empire till 1848 and was abolished in Russia in 1861, but they don't - which tells you that it's not about the past or even about slavery, but about the present in the USA.

The Portuguese continued forced labour in Mozambique as late as Salazar's time and they supplied forced labour to the mines and plantations of the nearby British colonies.

Indentured Indian labourers in Mauritius and many other British possessions who replaced the slaves after 1833 were little better than slaves.

Indentured Chinese labourers in South Africa aroused anger in the UK in the early 20th century - the 'Chinese slavery' issue which was important in the 1906 general election.

Slavery in Mali exists today, with as many as 200,000 people held in direct servitude to a master.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Mali

It would depend on the owner but slaves were extremely expensive to buy ($150 for a field hand, up to $300 for a well spoken trained house servant or good breeding stock) so their was a HUGE investment in manpower that had to be fed, cared for when sick and housed. Like a fine car or other expensive property, good treatment was good business.Many Southerners became very attached to the house slaves and treated them almost like family. After the Emancipation Proclamation, thousands left the plantations but millions stayed even after the war; it was the only home they knew.There were the Simon Legree type who were brutal bastards but they were few as cruelty was not acceptable in "polite" Southern society.

The historic problem of emancipation was that without land freed slaves were "free" to return to the plantations (with all that it represented). Emancipation meant little without the dividing up of the plantations, and the fullfillment of the historic promise of "40 acres and a mule."

The Northern government was willing to end the property rights of slave ownership, but were determined to prevent the violation of property rights in land. And that laid a firm basis for the return of African American people to a new form of servitude (throughout the late 1800s) which was semi-feudal in economics, and politically took the odious form of Jim Crow and lynch law.

There were a few places in the South where freed slaves seized the land for themselves (most famously the Sea Islands of the Carolinas and the Jefferson Davis plantation in Mississippi). But elsewhere the same federal troops that enforced emancipation also (tragically) prevented the breakup of the plantations (and the ownership of land by the freed slaves).

This is exactly my point - that slavery (which was an undoubted evil) was not utterly different from the conditions in which freed slaves and landless labourers lived and live today. We are exaggerating the evils of slavery for what I call for shorthand zeitgiest reasons.

To an American the word feudal may be pejorative. To an Englishman or European this is not necessarily the case.

Slavery in ancient times was evidently common in most inhabited parts of the world. Abraham of Ur had a slave (servant) in his new home, according to the Bible, with whom he had a son. It is also possible that he had more than one servant. Its presence in more modern times, however, is what is more curious.

History is all personal interpretation and bias. There is no way to be completely non bias or objective. But that said, the American South treated slaves poorly most of the time. There are few cases of proper treatment, much less kindly treatment. Anyway, my paper on the Social Ideals of the Lost Cause and the 1895 Atlanta Cotton States Exposition may give you some more insight. You may disagree, as I was raised in the South here in north Atlanta and am bias towards the South. But, I read northern history, southern history and recent and past history on the subject matter and applied my best, most non-biased interpretation of the impact that a white hierarchical system had on the disfranchisement of African Americans before and after the Civil War. Sad topic, but seems like one that must be relearned and addressed. We never fully integrated with Booker T. Washington's "Atlanta Compromise" speech nor during the Civil Rights era with Martin Luther King, Jr and the Freedom Bus Boycott riders. Pushing away the Southern Christian Leadership Coalition and other white organizations backfired and hurt the Civil Rights Movement. The problem is white people think there is no racial problems that exists anymore while black people think the same way they have since 1890; and that is that they can fix this problem on their own and that it is their own triumph to be had. Well, as Mandela was able to deduce, this is not how racial harmony is addressed. Instead, take the total integration approach and lets unite together for the common cause of racial harmony because this is both a white and black problem. And we, the U.S., will never dissolve this problem unless, as I believe, we rise up together and look at any person with a heart beat as a human being and not a certain race of human beings. The only distinction is a shade in color, besides that there is not real huge difference in race except the fact that there has been a white dominated structured system in place for centuries. Lets target areas that still teach LOST CAUSE elements from the old and new south to our youth and educate them and reunite our great country!

One time, when touring a historic plantation in North Carolina, the docent/interpreter/what-have-you asked where my group was from. After explaining our trip from our home in New England, said docent promptly replied, "Well don't you worry they treated their slaves real nice here. Of all the slave families employed, only one family left after emancipation."

Without discussing the humor in apologizing for a past that I cannot hold against anyone, I found it interesting that someone may forget the cruelty many blacks endured during AND after enslavement. Of course those slave families did not leave that North Carolina plantation - there were not many other places to go, to sustain a family, to find a job, to find equality.

I suppose the fundamental answer to the original question in this discussion is just relative. I would not eagerly claim that slaves were treated well, but perhaps they were treated better (in some instances, as described in some of the Slave Narratives) under the management of white folks compared to when they had to advocate for themselves in a world where no one cared to help because there was no longer property-related or economic incentive. Our racial history is a complicated and often sad one, but it is important to acknowledge these original accounts, and consider the answers to these difficult questions.

I wrote this before the massacre in Charleston and subsequent brouhaha about getting rid of the Confederate flag and symbols form US life. I was inspired to write it after reading a pro-Confederate blog. This blog has now published an interesting defence of the importance of flying the Confederate flag. It's here: http://therisingseed.blogspot.ro/2015/06/debating-charleston-confederate-flag.html

The rebellion was seeking recognition from Britain, which was aggressively opposed to the slave trade. They wanted to remove an objection to recognition: That the emergence of a large slave republic might revitalize the slave trade that the British navy was so actively combating. No one thinks that the Confederate rhetoric on slave trade represents any softening of their militant defense of slavery, or their profound belief in its divinely-endorsed righteousness.

* Why did free blacks fight for the Confederacy?

They didn't. There is no evidence of Africans fighting for the confederacy. Some "joined" the army to accompany their masters and served as slave-bodyservants. There was one unit formed in Louisiana, nominally to fight for the Confederacy, that included a few "free men of color" -- this had to do with the unique class structure in Lousiana (where free men of color were not generally freed slaves, and were not closely associated with the slaves).

At the end of the war, the Confederate government (in a sign of its desperation and confusion) considered opening the army ranks to Black men.... the odd proposal went no where (for obvious reasons). There is one historical report that a "unit" of Black men marched around Richmond in one government-sponsored march -- but (revealingly) they were not armed.

* Why did the vast majority of non-slaveholding Southerners fight?

This is not an unknown matter. First, there was a deep and very conservative embrace of "a way of life." Large slaveowners were (as is well known) only a small percentage of the white population. But many of the non-slaveowning white farmers aspired to prosper AND OWN SLAVES. Also, large sections of the white population were entwined with the slave system even if they were not (themselves) slave-owners -- they were paid as overseers, or transport, or (especially) part of the elaborate anti-slave system of armed paddyrollers and militia. In other words, this was a society BASED on massive slavery -- and that enmeshed and influenced many whites who were not directly slaveowners.

In other words, they fought because they supported the cause of the Confederacy, and because they didn't want that way of life transformed from without.

The Confederate authorities presented the war as "the Northern war of aggression" -- i.e. as an invasion. And many regions of the U.S. were intensely localist... and so defense of home was entwined with the defense of "a way of life" (i.e. slave society).

Finally, many fought because they were drafted. The confederacy enacted a forced military conscription in 1982 (almost as soon as the war started in earnest) and a year before the federal authorities did.

There are massive narratives that describe the bitterness and suffering of the slaves. And there are (as many have said) profound reasons why former slaves speaking late in life to white researchers might selectively describe their experiences.

"Relatively peaceful" is itself an odd term. Any disruption of the peace was met with whipping, amputation, torture and death. Any white man had (without intervention of law or authority) the right to brutalize any Black person without reprocussion. There are states in the south where for over a century not a single white person was ever punished or convicted of killing a Black person (in a century that covered the whole period of mass lynchings and related crimes).

Finally, everyone knows the difference between "house slaves" and "field slaves" -- in conditions of life, in outlook, and in day-to-day relations with the masters. Narratives of house slaves often reflected their status (as nannies, cooks, carriage drivers, and body servants of the masters).

* Why did foreign observers and the US Census point to greater race-relations in the South than in the North?

(This sentence must have a typo.)

* Why did Lincoln go to war if his intention according to the 1st Inaugural, was not to free slaves?

Lincoln went to war to preserve the country in its existing form -- to "preserve the union" and to prevent regional secession.

His policy was to prevent the extension of slavery into the territories, and oppose any secession by slave-holding states. And he held secession to be a casus belli.

* Are you aware that the same arguments you're using against the "Confederate Flag" can just be easily used against the Stars and Stripes as well?

This is an odd question. Political symbols have complex meanings -- depending on particular audiences.

But, within the U.S., the Confederate flag has been the most prominent and ubiquitous symbol of the racist mobs that opposed civil rights. Whenever racist showed up to attack Freedom riders, or blacks sitting at lunch counters, or seeking to apply to college, their crowds flew the confederate flag. When the police attacked the marchers at the Pettis Bridge, the police had the Confederate flag painted on their helmets.

The U.S. flag has a different history and different meaning. Some in the world certainly see it as a symbol of abuse -- but each symbol needs to be understood and evaluated on its own.

* Why shouldn't we ban the Stars and Stripes since it flew over slave ships?

Certainly, the "original sin" of slavery is not just a crime of the Confederacy. And it is a historic reality that deeply marks the WHOLE history of the U.S. The U.S. constitution justified slavery. The Declaration of Independence removed protests against slavery. The U.S. authorities defended slavery, supported rounding up slaves (and selling free men back into slavery).

And certainly all that should be remembered, and inevitably becomes part of what people need to understand about "what it all represented."

And then the historical fact is that this U.S. flag flew over the armies that abolished slavery, and that occupied the South to enforce Reconstruction. I.e. in regard to slavery, the U.S. flag does have that significant (if brief) involvement with the ending of slavery.

* Do you condone the atrocities waged by Sherman in SC? --- Atrocities the soldiers represented by the memorial were trying to prevent?

The first necessary response is "What atrocities?"

There has been a century of hype and complaint over Sherman's march -- from those Sherman defeated.

Sherman's army tore up the heartland of the Confederacy, disrupted their base area of food production, and broke up their transportation. It broke the back of the Confederacy, and helped bring the war to a swift and welcome end -- with a victory for the forces opposing slavery.

* Do black Confederate lives matter to you?

There were no "black Confederates" of any meaningful number. The Confederate army had (predictably) enslaved bodyservants for white officers, and vast gangs of enslaved logistical support

And the history of anti-confederate resistance among those gangs of forced laborers is interesting.

One of the little known episodes: the Lumbee people (a "free people of color") in North Carolina were simply "reclassified" by the Confederate authorities -- they were declared slaves and forced to build the Confederate defenses of North Carolina. this sparked a remarkable guerrilla war among the Lumbee -- that welcomed and guided Sherman's forces through the formidable swamps of that region.

Yesterday, and today, Oklahoma is blessed(?) with the presence of President Obama [ whatever you feel about him respect the office ]. As his visit progressed he was followed around by a very large group of people flying the various Confederate Flags. On the news they interviewed one of the "protesters", a black [ sorry, I'm not up on the current PC terminology ] man. There were several black people in the group. All flying Confederate flags.

Firstly, answering to the original question of southern and northern slavery owners being benevolent, read this:

"Though slavery had such a wide variety of faces, the underlying concepts were always the same. Slaves were considered property, and they were property because they were black. Their status as property was enforced by violence -- actual or threatened. People, black and white, lived together within these parameters, and their lives together took many forms.

Enslaved African Americans could never forget their status as property, no matter how well their owners treated them. But it would be too simplistic to say that all masters and slaves hated each other. Human beings who live and work together are bound to form relationships of some kind, and some masters and slaves genuinely cared for each other. But the caring was tempered and limited by the power imbalance under which it grew. Within the narrow confines of slavery, human relationships ran the gamut from compassionate to contemptuous. But the masters and slaves never approached equality.

The standard image of Southern slavery is that of a large plantation with hundreds of slaves. In fact, such situations were rare. Fully 3/4 of Southern whites did not even own slaves; of those who did, 88% owned twenty or fewer. Whites who did not own slaves were primarily yeoman farmers. Practically speaking, the institution of slavery did not help these people. And yet most non-slave holding white Southerners identified with and defended the institution of slavery. Though many resented the wealth and power of the large slaveholders, they aspired to own slaves themselves and to join the privileged ranks." - "Conditions of antebellum slavery 1830 - 1860". http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2956.html

Although the above three paragraphs are not my own words, I agree with most the statements and I know the numbers are correct from doing my own research on my article I wrote and published on linkedin.com titled "The 1895 Atlanta Cotton States Exposition: Examining the new South". The statistics show close to 3% of the slave owners in the South owned 70% of the slaves. So, those 3% had much to lose and put all their money towards fighting, instead of negotiating like a proper adult and realizing human beings are more important and beneficial economically to society than treating them as property and continuing the slave state mentality.

Now to answer some of the questions the pro-confederate blogging websites brought up, which are important because people interpret language incorrectly, whether verbal or written and sometimes purposefully.

The majority of non-slave holding whites that fought in the war did so because of the rich white plantation owners that owned their land and controlled their prices and loans at the general stores. These farmers were sometimes paid to fight but most were convinced through propaganda to take up arms for their families first, then city, state, and then for the Confederate States. A lack of identity is easily seen when the soldiers who fought for the South were all fighting for their localities first and nation last. That is why I believe the Lost Cause ideology took such a strong hold over the entire nation during and after reconstruction was because the South needed to identify with something, as well as justify their actions, and the North and money was what they ended up reconciling with leaving race relations out of the picture to what I and other historians call the "Racial Imperative". Another big factor is many non-slave holding whites were poor and uneducated. In addition, slavery gave the farmers a group of people to feel superior to. So, these rich southern white men pushed a strong narrative that accused the "North" of intruding into southern affairs and that they were stripping individual states' rights away, piece by piece. As the conflict grew, these rich southern "gentlemen" did not want to lose their slaves (which was the• lose their slaves (which was their credit line and sign of wealth) and became more aggressive and started framing a narrative that was modeled similar to the one the United States used against the English Crown to gain its independence. The three reasons the Confederate States gave for leaving the union were: The Confederate States felt the United States thought they had broken the Constitution. The Confederacy argued that the United States had failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Laws. The government would not allow slavery in the new territories (new states) that were being established. Lincoln went to war to save the Union (the United States of America) and not to free the slaves. He freed the slaves in the process but he went to war only because he believed in a strong Union of states and would not allow the 11 confederate states to leave because they were too valuable economically, strategically and politically (keep in mind that the Confederate States went to war to keep slavery and it's ideals of a white hierarchical dominated male society). Europeans were looking to support the South since 90% of cotton was produced in the South and they needed it for manufacturing, especially the English and French at the time.

Historical comparisons tend to relativize evil when each can be treated separately, particularly when one reaches across time and space to compare or contrast. The questions above have reasonable answers. For example, importing new slaves could of course drive down owners' value, and the same constitution preserved slavery as it existed. Lincoln tried to avoid alienating border states and his first inaugural did not amount to a change of his view of slavery. Remember that four states joined the Confederacy only after the Ft. Sumter crisis, that Virginia divided on the issue, while only 'rogue' succession conventions met in Kentucky and Missouri to join the Confederacy, giving them a star in both flags.

That the Stars and Stripes flew over slave ships is clear as did a number of foreign flags including the Union Jack. But the Confederate flag has had a different history since the end of the Civil War. Those who argue that it represents heritage and not hate, I take at their word. I think slave owners did not hate their slaves, but even if we allow that hate is not necessarily part of the heritage, the heritage is also not history one cares to repeat, and our remembrance of it should not be one of celebration, but sober reflection on a national tragedy for which we still pay a price.

The Civil War has at times been represented as a victory of freedom over slavery, ignoring how much the war itself left undone, that it killed many and brutalized a generation not to be reconciled for some time. It was a national tragedy following the failure of American institutions at that time to resolve the moral dilemma of race-based slavery in a way that balanced regional economic interests and also - this would have been a very tall order - to set a road map for former slaves to become the educated citizens of a liberal democracy. Very few, North or South, or slaves themselves, could see clearly in 1860 how this might be achieved, and the prospect of change drove much fear and insecurity. That this remains an issue well over a century later is the context in which the Confederate battle flag may be seen as a part of an all-American legacy, not limited to Southern heritage or the dead on one side only. The war is over.

Blame for the attitudes of ancestors is no way forward in a world where collective guilt for the sins of fathers has no place, but collective responsibility for what we do with the society we find today remains imperative. It is sometimes said, for example, that the famous compromise in the Constitution valued slaves as only three-fifths the value of a white. This misses the point. Slaves had no representation at all and their value was market value. The compromise merely gave slave-owning regions a larger voice in Congress, an agreement struck to obtain a union, certainly not one to make it perfect, and one with tragic consequences.

As for Sherman's atrocities, I am reminded of George Orwell's observation during the Spanish Civil War that, in effect, the longer a war lasts, the greater the degradation that occurs because human rights and the freedom of the press are inconsistent with military efficiency. Consider how the Second World War ended. So the question whether one 'condones' what Sherman did comes far too late and is rhetorical at a time when the decision-makers have no voice.

How the Confederate flag was seen in 1860 is not the point, or even how it was seen when battle flags were later returned to the South in a spirit of reconciliation, one that occurred between the mainly, albeit not exclusively white armies that fought the war (recalling that the military was not integrated until the Truman administration). If the Confederate flag interferes with today's challenges, then do we use it look forward, or to keep looking back? It is, after all, history and that is where it belongs.James Reuland

Some have suggested that the original question: “How well or badly were slaves treated in the American South?” is the wrong question because as slaves they could never have been treated well but only differently. I suspect that, if we could pose the question to slaves themselves, some would answer that they are treated better or worse than others.

Prof. Jay Edwards of LSU has studied the role of detached kitchens in the South. Among his conclusions are that the kitchens were very important to the slaves who worked in them. They were rarely visited by the matron of the plantation hence the slave who was in charge acquired a status higher than that of other slaves. While they may have longed for freedom they probably valued their status and would have preferred it to that of other slaves.

I don't believe Lincoln should have let the South secede because we are all part of America and he knew that and would never let the most important half of the country go without a fight. Also, Lincoln knew that many in the South (at the time around 1861) were uneducated and fighting a war for 3% of the people based off of propaganda principals and ideals steeped in illusions of grandeur rather than for a new progressive states rights country as the South's advocates claimed. The Confederates wanted, only, to keep slavery as an institution and a white male hierarchical system for the next century and to maintain control of King Cotton. Had they succeeded in succession without a war I believe slavery would have still died out because the trade itself was already banned and by the late 1880s Brazil was on board which was the main and chief exporter of slaves. Even though you can make the argument that the South could have kept on breeding within it's own borders I doubt that would have continued for very long (not getting into those details though). Anyway, I agree that there are many parallels between Lincoln and Bush in respect to how they both used unconstitutional methods to accomplish their goals, however one (Lincoln) was justified and the other was not. Although, Lincoln could have done more to protect the African American population and freed them sooner I don't believe he is at fault for the race relation problems in the South. But, I will agree with you again that U.S. History is GREATLY mythic, especially within our own borders. That is how the Lost Cause was started and the fact that Cavalier blood ran through the veins of many of the South's great vigorous leaders/fighters. Even the North believed it for a good long while and the movie "Gone with the Wind" is an example of that. About the only thing true in that movie is the fact that Atlanta (the city where I was born, live, and graduated nearby) was burned to the ground by Sherman's march to the sea to destroy our naval ports and means of economic viability. And right NOW many states and educational leaders are pushing for a more "respectable" approach to U.S. History in regards to re-writing the curriculum for our K-12 (up to high school level or age 18). These educational leaders control the states curriculum and want, in their own words, to re-write "a more patriotic/harmonious approach to U.S. history." What they mean by this is that they feel U.S. History has been too harsh/critical on itself with detailing events like the removal of the Native Americans (Indians), Civil War, Race Relations, Cold War Era, and Civil Rights Era/Vietnam, etc. This is what scares me the most!!! If we do not teach, ESPECIALLY within our own borders, the TRUTH from the most non-bias perspective possible about the past history of the U.S. then we are bound to repeat the events left out in one way or another as well as impair and stagger the educational system, giving way to a false perspective of past reality. Dangerous! I hope this does not happen, and wonder how it even could with so many liberals running our educational system, but it is being discussed and possibly implemented. Lastly, U.S. history is mythic in some regards because it had to be back in the 1800s. The nation was only 50 to 100yrs old and needed to forge an identity of it's own and quit looking towards Europe for inspiration and ideology. So, many people such as William James, Peirce, Thoreau, Dewey, and Emerson encouraged an introspective, pragmatic ideology that was based off of experience and knowing oneself. They did not want Americans to blindly follow what institutions (in particular the Catholic Church), organizations and establishments (colleges for example). These great philosophers wanted all Americans to follow their own hearts and minds, instead of following what another man said or institution said, in concern to being oneself goes.Jonathan Mosby

Where modern US history is most mythic is when dealing with civil rights, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parkes. But winners write history and so the isolationists, Hoover, the Confederates, the patriots who fought for their King in 1776 are treated as the villains of the piece.

FDR is mythologised. So are the suffragettes, though they too were women of their age. For example. Carrie Chapman Catt argued "White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by women's suffrage," primarily because statistics showed more white women than black women would vote. She complained that "there are vast groups of totally illiterate, and others of gross ignorance, groups of men of all nations of Europe, uneducated Indians and Negroes" who were enfranchised, while women were not.

What I have read reveals that different slaves were treated differently. Some were held in tight bondage, and in cases abused, while others had varying degrees of freedom. Some were allowed to have jobs and keep their earnings. According to “Thomas Jefferson's Creme Brulee: How a Founding Father and His Slave James Hemings Introduced French Cuisine to America” by Thomas J. Craughwell James Hemings was allowed to work on his own at times. We read stories of slaves buying their freedom, which indicates that they were allowed to keep some wages. I always thought that all of a slave’s earnings went to his owners, as is the case with property like American Pharoah, but apparently that was not always the case. Apparently slavery was a more complex institution than a superficial examination would suggest.

The evidence is clear from history alone. Only two points need to be made to find how the slaves in the south were treated, comparatively, to both the slaves in the Caribbean and wage labor in the United States:

* The United States had a slave population that was capable of reproduction, enabling the slave trade to continue even after the trade from Africa came to an end. This is far different than the slaves in the Caribbean Islands that were worked to death at a young age, making a slave population that was able to reproduce enough to enable the trade to continue nearly impossible.

* Pro-Slavery Southerners were, for a time, able to successfully argue that the slaves in the Southern states were healthier and lived longer than the free wage-laborers in the north. This, in itself, implies that the population was better fed, had better sanitation, and more resources than free labor in the North.

Now you can take those facts as you will and I am certain that a great many o will take it out of context, but the evidence suggests that the powered elite in the north were just as guilty of cruelty and oppression as the powered elite in the north.

The argument hasn't changed, only the words, "slavery" and "wage-slave," and in either case, even back in the infancy of our nation, the powered elites had failed to treat their economic lessors with any human decency, be they slave owners or not.

Progressives can pat themselves on the back for condemning the U.S. because of its history of slavery. They should look at their own history if they want something to condemn. The Yalta Agreement and the Morgenthau Plan both have provisions for slave labor. This did not include the millions of Soviet citizens that were forcefully repatriated to either immediate death or a slow death in the gulag. Victor Kravchenko describes the Soviet slave system in his book, I Chose Freedom: “Under a true slave system, such as existed in the United States before the Civil War, for instance, the slaves represent an economic value and therefore receive at least the kind of care and protection given to work animals. The position of the Soviet slave is infinitely worse. The supply is well-nigh inexhaustible and the slave-holder, the Soviet state, apparently finds it more economical to let them die in droves than to feed and clothe them.” (p. 341) Peter Dreier “In some ways, Wallace was naive about the Soviet Union. He visited the port city of Magadan in Siberia in 1944 and described it as "combination TVA and Hudson's Bay Company." In reality, it was a slave-labor camp filled with political prisoners. One of the few historians who honestly uses the term "slavery" instead of the euphemism "enforced labor," is Brian Loring Villa. He writes: "It is interesting to observe that Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who presumably represented the interests of working men, insisted on exploiting German slave labor." Ann Louise Strong: “The labor camps have won hight reputation throughout the Soviet Union as places where tens of thousands of men have been reclaimed. So well known and effective is the Soviet method of remaking human beings that criminals occasionally now apply to be admitted.”

The slave owners who emigrated from Haiti, forming the Creole class in New Orleans, were generally horrible to their slaves (that's why they lost Haiti). The expected lifespan of a slave in a Haitian plantation was about one year. The cruelty of the Louisiana slave owner was legendary among slaves in other regions. "To be sold down the river", which now expresses betrayal, originally meant being sold as a slave in New Orleans (down the Mississippi). Ironically, a large number of these slave owners were themselves black under the Code Civil. One's skin color did not bar one from high social status in French colonies, as it did in English colonies. A good example of this was the Empress Josephine, who was probably 1/8th or 1/16 black (despite the later protestations of her family members). In or around 1992, the City Council of New Orleans decided to rename any school named after a slave owner, naming them instead after antebellum prosperous and free blacks. Unfortunately, they then found out that most of the new namesakes were named after slave-owning blacks. I can't remember the ending of that kerfuffle.George West

My PhD thesis was on the constitutional history of slavery during the French Revolution. As George states, the conditions of slaves in the French colonies were terrible. The principle reason for this (as explained in Time on the Cross noted above) was the the tropical climate was so terrible, the labor needed to plant and harvest sugar cane so brutal, and the chance of death from tropical disease so high that it simply was not cost effective for the planters to take care of their slaves. The British did much better, as did most American slave owners. Cheers, DLR

In my slavery course at UMASS Boston under Dr Mike Chesson, Phd Harvard, we talked about this. It seems that if a white interviewer aked the questiones they got the false narrative but let a black/brown skinned individual asked the questions and you got a lot more of the truth. Its telling that there are no records of any white folks wanting to be slaves to be " treated well". It was a national sin whose impact is still being felt in the African American community today.